Growing a Garden

I have been receiving updates from my parents on their gardens (yes they have multiple, they are practically professional gardeners now) and in the last email my mom said:

“You should plant cherry tomatoes this weekend.  All you need to do is dig a hole, about an inch deeper than the container the plant comes in  and put the plant in, then water it from time to time and you will have lots of cherry tomatoes.  Dad uses Miracle Grow, but you don't have to.  Then next year you will probably have volunteers that come up on their own.  That area on the side of the garage would work well.”


They also sent photos and showed me that if my 3-year-old nephew can garden, I can probably figure it out.
So Jeff and I walked across the street to the neighborhood nursery, asked which plants any dummy could grow, and picked up some plants with crazy names:

2 Sweet 100 (red cherry tomato) plants

1 Sun Sugar (yellow tomato) plant

2 Thin Skin (bell pepper) plants

1 Sonora (small pepper) plants

1 Jalapeno plant

2 Cucumber plants

 First of all, my mom made it sound so easy that I felt stupid calling and asking really what to do.  So I did what everyone in 2012 does, and Googled “How to start a garden” and watched a bunch videos of old people making their vegetable gardens.  I found out what materials we needed and went to Lowes and picked up some tools and soil/fertilizer.

SO glad I bought the 4 bags of soil (and by the way, it is NOT dirt…..DIRT is what gets under your fingernails, just a little tip for an geological engineer), because after I pulled all the weeds and started cultivating the soil, I found out that the previous renter put all his dog’s poop in the very gardening bed that I was going to do my planting in!  There was petrified poop from multiple years of living at this place and it took me FOREVER to shovel all the poop out.  There was more poop than actual soil in one part.  So disgusting. I continued the gardening process in the clean and safe (poop free) areas and before I knew it I had a garden.
I am so excited to see if we get some good veggies.  But I have to wait.  Waiting is not something I am good at and I want my vegetables NOW.  Let’s hope I don’t forget to water them, good thing Jeff is good at that sort of thing.